Happy Death Day 2U: Tree dies again and again in second trailer

Universal Pictures released a second full-length trailer for the upcoming horror sequelHappy Death Day 2U on the very first day of 2019, about six weeks ahead of the film's Valentine's Day debut.

Like the first trailer did, the second round of footage establishes the cranked-up premise of the follow-up film: Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) is once again trapped in the time loop that forces her to outrun and outwit a serial killer who's thirsty for her blood. Each time the murderer succeeds and Tree's life gets cut tragically short, her day starts over again… and again… and again. The only way to break the loop and correct the timeline is to slay the masked killer before they can stab, shove, slash, or shoot Tree.

But this time around, Tree isn't the killer's only quarry. No, in Happy Death Day 2U, Tree's friends, her boyfriend Carter (To All the Boys I've Loved Before's Israel Broussard), and her roommate Lori (Shameless' Ruby Modine) — who was revealed as the killer in the original movie — all have targets on their backs. When Lori is found dead, Tree realizes that someone else has taken it upon themselves to bring an end to her and her friends' lives. To stop them from succeeding, Tree has to deliberately die repeatedly — and in increasingly interesting ways, as this new trailer teases — and solve the mystery behind the murderer's identity.

Bumping up the number of victims and ways in which each character can die allows for Happy Death Day 2U to expand upon its predecessor in a fun and freaky way — a typical move for production company Blumhouse, which has historically done quite well in crafting satisfying sequels for its properties like The Purge and Paranormal Activity.

According to actress Rothe, Happy Death Day 2U won't be a re-treading of the original with extra blood, more creative deaths, and a higher body count — nor will it be a standard horror film, either. Rather, it's "a horror, comedy, rom-com drama" that takes what worked in the original and intensifies it.

"A lot of times with horror movies, if there's a sequel, it's almost a repeat, with different actors and slightly different storylines, but it worked, so you do the same thing again. [Director] Chris [Landon] has done this incredible thing where the sequel, the way he described it to me, elevates the movie from being a horror movie … into a Back to the Future-type of genre film where the sequel joins us right from where we left off," Rothe told Collider in early 2018. "It explains a lot of things in the first one that didn't get explained, and it elevates everything. I was really pleased to know that we weren't just gonna be pushing all the buttons that people loved the first time, over and over again, 'cause I think that gets old."

It's evident that Landon and company are going big and bold with Happy Death Day 2U, and if things end up panning out as well as the team hopes, perhaps the sequel pic will even spark a third installment. Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, we can all look forward to seeing Happy Death Day 2U in theaters on February 14.